this little light of mine
by Grand Phoenix
Summary: It's time to go back home. Back to reality. (Back to Sylvanas.) [Alleria, on the Vinidcaar, after the Battle of Antorus][pre-BfA, spoilers for post-Legion]


**Notes1:** The ending cinematic to Antorus was amazing, and I'm probably in the minority that's okay about not fighting Sargeras. However, it was the datamined broadcast texts for the allied races that are to be introduced in _Battle for Azeroth_ , and Alleria's role in regards to the Void Elves (the Ren'dorei), Silvermoon, and the hints being dropped toward her reunion with Sylvanas that prompted me to type this out (although her going Alliance, while understandable given her history, still leaves me saddened that she may come to blows with my belf hunter, regardless of the way I RP her.) It was more or less written from beginning to end within less than half a day at the same speed _This Is The Price You Pay For Love_ went, but work kept me from posting it earlier today.  
 **Notes2:** Trying to get involved in any conversation that deals with the topic of the Windrunners, their place in the factions, their human lovers (or, at least, Sylvanas was very fond of Nathanos, and if anyone needs to place blame on that, it's on Tolkien for popularizing it), and their relation to the Alliance is ultimately fruitless. The official WoW Story Forum is a cesspool and MMO-Champ is too busy circle-jerking over Alleria being "Anduin's cheerleader" and taking Vereesa's place as the "dumbest Windrunner" all while reminding everyone that having a male human mate cuts their cranial processing power in half (IMO I'd love to see more of Arator and learn just how he got his title, the Redeemer, and we need to see Vereesa's twins in the game and not just in the novels). At the time of this writing, I kind of gave up - or rather, I'm getting to close to giving up - on having a rational, sane discussion with the posters on MMO-Champ over the Windrunners, because I feel as though I'm losing brain cells trying to talk sense into them. I don't even bother with the official forums anymore. Yes, they're that terrible, so save yourselves the headache and steer clear of both.  
 **Notes3:** I'll admit to not having watched the _A Thousand Year War_ audio drama yet, but I'm aware the Void is a chaotic force prone to driving its practitioners to madness. They have that trickster archetype I adore in fiction, and, while it is seen as evil and tells half-truths (that are more likely to see you killed than do any good), I tried to make the characterization of the voices of the Void in Alleria's head be smarmy and goading. Also, like the rest of the pre-BfA oneshots, I'm keeping the theories that are cropping up on forums - mainly Vereesa dying at Teldrassil or deliberately leaving key pieces of information out of her talk with Alleria on the Vindicaar just to paint the Horde in a bad light - deliberately vague so this doesn't suddenly veer into AU territory.  
 **Notes4:** Mishka the high elf hunter was going to make an appearance/cameo in this, but the end result has Alleria and Turalyon by themselves; in the end, I figured it would be better for her to show up in another fanfic some other time during Argus/after Antorus. However, there is a reference to my draenei monk and priest, two alts I haven't touched in a long time (well, the priest has yet to be remade) but are still available to be put to use on the US servers. Although they go unnamed here, they are called Kajaar (monk) and Artyem (priest), and neither are, obviously, Lightforged.

* * *

She's down there somewhere. Living, of a sort, caught in a limbo between breathless wakefulness and the numb, expectant hollowness of time long since stripped away but also regained—stolen, but beholden and back where it belongs, even if the spot it fits into can't conform to the ill-cut carvings she had been reshaped with. _Undead_ , Vereesa had said, uncomfortably, quietly, so none but the two of them could hear. Put to the sword when Arthas rampaged across Quel'Thalas and raised her as his weapon of destruction, the first of the banshees. _She didn't stand a chance,_ she went on, _but she gave her life for us._

 _What about now?_ She had asked.

 _Indeed, little one,_ the voices whispered, silky and full of a hungry, serpentine greed. _What about now?_

The silence had been excruciating, stifling, and though in reality it had been quite short Vereesa appeared torn, at a loss for words, and Alleria had to refrain from repeating herself, had to rein on the temper and the panic wanting to erupt again and put her hands on her. Then she did speak—tentatively: _She…does. But she's…not the same. The transformation changed her._

 _How?_ She had asked, voice steady, even as the world opened up beneath her feet. She had not swayed then, did not feel faint, did not taste on her tongue the eager sickness worming through her intestines. She still doesn't, even now, staring down upon Azeroth looming blue and large in the Great Dark, though she wishes she could.

 _How?_ She pressed again, not demanding, unfettered. Just equally quiet.

So Vereesa told her, and Alleria listened, all while trying to stay afloat.

That had been several weeks ago, and once everything had settled, when she could safely say to herself the world righted itself and she could walk steadily on both feet, she turned her attention back to the warfront. Back to Argus, her focus honed in on Antorus, the Burning Throne.

It had come and gone. The Unmaker, driven mad by the torture he endured, has been put out of his misery. From his death the demons of the Burning Legion cannot regenerate as quickly as they once did, and those left stranded on Argus when the portal closed are doomed to fall beneath the blades of the Lightforged, the krokul, and the Illidari demon hunters that stayed behind when the Army of the Light, backed by the forces of Azeroth, stormed Antorus. Sargeras, the dread Dark Titan, had been closed—so close, in fact, he had one hand hovering just shy of touching the planet itself. What remained of the Titans on their thrones expended the last of their strength and drew him inward, into the Seat of the Pantheon to be contained and watched, broken, by Illidan Stormrage, first of the demon hunters, hero and Betrayer of the world, for all eternity.

 _But oh! my child—nothing lasts forever._

No. No, it didn't, did it? Sargeras may be gone, but he got in one last parting shot before he vanished into the Great Dark: he had plunged his blade into the planet, she had watched it go down, in slow motion and as if on fire, and it is an absolute miracle Azeroth was not cloven and destroyed right then and there. But still it hangs; it's been hanging for the thousand years she and Turalyon have been away in the Nether, and if anyone counts their blessings it—no, she will continue to hang in there for a thousand years more.

 _Do you really think so? Just look at the size of that thing! Your optimism is so…endearing. We can scarce believe it._

She places a hand upon a transparent pane of the Vindicaar's crystal shield and takes her in, takes all of her in with the analytical gaze of a huntress observing the lay of the land: the whirlpool at the very center that was the Maelstrom; the islands limning the western coast of the Kingdoms and the Azure/Bloodmyst Isles lying just shy of Kalimdor (Velen was kind enough to point them out to her, and later on a couple of draenei, a monk and a priest whom, she could tell from first glance, had dabbled a little too much in the Shadow, of the home they made there and securing their future and livelihood to the Alliance); summery Pandaria at the south pole and wintry Northrend at the opposite.

From this angle, she can see Quel'Thalas and Quel'Danas, resting in the gloom of night.

This is her home. This is the home she never knew existed beyond the trees of Eversong Woods. This is the home she never realized consisted more than just the Alliance when the Sons of Lothar took those first few steps on Draenor. The thought leaves her breathless.

The thought of having nephews—nephews!—down there makes her smile. Just a ghost of it, but she can see it in her reflection, if only barely.

Yet it's the thought of Sylvanas that makes her breathe again.

Sylvanas Windrunner, her younger sister, proud and steadfast and attached at the hip since she could walk, who had been the pride and joy of the family no matter how much she insisted that was not the case. Sylvanas, the Ranger-General of Quel'Thalas, though she insisted, when no one was around, Alleria was always the better shot and would do more good for their family and elfkind if she stayed close to home and not wandering abroad among the Farstriders.

That girl, Vereesa had said, is gone, and only Sylvanas Windrunner the Banshee Queen of the Forsaken, the Warchief of the Horde, remained.

She can't wrap her mind around it, even now. The Horde isn't the same as the one she faced in the past, and they certainly weren't privy to the fel-induced madness and bloodlust that had dominated their ranks. But this is _the Horde_ , two of which were the trolls and the orcs, one a lifetime enemy of the Quel'dorei and the other a war machine that had butchered their kin (her kin, and she lets out another shuttering breath) and razed the forests of Quel'Thalas to the ground before they turned their wrath on Lordaeron. There was nothing personal to be held against the tauren, the goblins, or the Huojin pandaren who threw their lot in with them, for they—and those trolls and orcs that came through the portal and lent their aid to the Army—had honor among them, they understood what the threat was and what would come thereafter ("…and hopefully it stays that way," Khadgar had told her, finding her secreted away in the shadows of the Matrix Core hours after Vereesa approached her, knees drawn to her chest and forehead resting in between).

But her people as well? The Quel'dorei?

 _Not Quel'dorei,_ she thinks. _Sin'dorei. Children of the Blood._

Further back in her mind, she asks herself, wildly, stupidly, _What difference does it make? Don't we bleed the same?_

Why? Why, after all this time, after everything that had been done to them, would they go to the Horde?

What the hell was Sylvanas thinking?

 _Control,_ the voices croon, so close to her ear that were she a lesser creature she would believe they would be standing right beside her. _Domination._

No. No, Sylvanas would never do something like that. The Sylvanas she knew, the Sylvanas that lived on in her mind and heart, would rather kill herself than join the Horde let alone accept the mantle of their leadership. Sylvanas would prefer to die than become…what? This…Light-forsaken monster? This impostor?

 _What about these Forsaken? They were human once, too. Are they monsters as well?_

 _What of the orcs? What of the trolls?_

 _What about you?_ The voices ask, and giggle and titter childishly, as though they're reveling in a very obvious punch-line she isn't aware of.

But she is aware of it, very much so, and it's with that thought she draws strength from and eases her breathing to a more relaxed rhythm. She applies a little more pressure against the pane, enough to get the blood circulating, and slowly closes it into a fist. Imagines the Maelstrom is a bright red jewel carried on an endlessly churning, cyclical current and grasps it tight, tight, until the light within is smothered and the faint wisps of Void energy that slither across her knuckles dissipates like smoke vapors.

 _I need to see my people. I need to see my sister. I need to be sure this is all—_ what, real and not one big lie Vereesa might have construed to pull at her heartstrings because she had been away for so long?

 _Who knows?_ The voices say innocently, smugly. _People can change, you know, and sometimes when the going gets rough, they're going to gain some very peculiar habits. Some good, some…bad. Would you like us to tell you what hers are?_

— _Won't you?—_

"Alleria?" Footsteps echo behind her, and she doesn't have to turn to see it's Turalyon coming up onto the platform. His armor is dented, scoured by fire and fel-tipped weaponry, and there's a hint of dried blood splashed across his breastplate. There's a lightweave cloth bandage placed over one brow, and sometimes it's difficult to distinguish which of the scars on his face are from past battles and which are from now, but he moves with purpose—cautious, after she had insisted, as politely as she could allow herself, to make himself scarce for a bit, but nonetheless worse for wear. He stops beside her, inches apart so as not to touch (and how it hurts still, some part of her despairs, that things cannot are not the same anymore), glancing at her. "Are you alright?"

She stares back down at Azeroth, at home, toward Quel'Thalas. Toward the ruins of Lordaeron, the Undercity, where darkness has all but snuffed the daylight from its domain. Where Sylvanas—or someone who looks like her Sylvanas—reigns. "Yes, I'm fine. What of you?"

He chuckles and rolls one shoulder, a small, boyish smile on his lips that never fails to make her light and her chest flutter. "It'll take more than a hundred demons to keep this old man down."

She smiles back. "You're not old. You're…well matured."

He laughs. "I like the sound of that!" He relaxes, and joins her in her vigil over Azeroth. She hasn't noticed before, not until now, that though Xe'ra is no more, the Light remains in his eyes. Hers, too, are different, if she focuses hard enough and tries not to squint; they are as blue as they had been born, blue as the day she crossed dimensions and the Sons of Lothar worried her absence from the Sunwell would make her suffer, but now they are darker. Not so much that it is noticeable, but the Void lingers, a brand she has placed on herself for the greater good and a reminder—a dangerous one, bordering on madness, but one that is omnipresent and ever vigilant.

How times change.

He smiles, but there's a nostalgia on his face that she herself had worn earlier: fond but sad. Longing and, underneath it all, dreading. "We're going home," he says.

"Yes," Alleria says, and lets her hand fall away from the pane. "Home."

"Are you nervous?"

Now it's her turn to smile, but it comes off strained, sour, without humor. "Should I be?" Later on, when the preparations are being made for the Vindicaar to set course for Azeroth, she will come to regret how harshly, how nihilistic, those words sounded, wishing fervently to take them back and wanting, more than anything, to apologize to Turalyon.

But he's not offended, nor does he appear to be offended (and will clearly say so when they arrive in Stormwind and look upon their statues and their epitaphs). "It's alright," he says softly. "We'll get through this."

She makes a low, affirmative sound. "Yeah." Together, just as they did before and just as they will in the future.

 _Until death do you part,_ the Void whispers, grinning widely, knowingly.

Indeed.


End file.
